Wired for Thought

CHAPTER 9

The Social Networks

I HAVE A LOT in common with Richard Rosenblatt. We are about the same age, are both entrepreneurs, and have both run public and private companies. We also share the kind of eternal optimism that irks many people. But what sets Rosenblatt apart from me is that he was chairman and CEO of MySpace, one of the most widely publicized companies in the world of social networking.

Rosenblatt cut his teeth with DrKoop.com and iMALL, the second of which was sold very profitably to Excite.¹ After that he managed eUniverse, a company that once had looked forward to a bright future until it was mismanaged and delisted from the NASDAQ exchange. That was when Rosenblatt jumped in.²

Rosenblatt doesn’t look for problems within companies; ...